Welcome to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, February 16th.

What's your attitude toward your job?

Today's podcast reminds us of our responsibility to work diligently as if we're working directly for Jesus Himself.

How many of you? Do you go to work energetic, enthusiastic about what you're going to accomplish or do you dread it?

Do you try to do as little as you can do or as much as you possibly can do?

Are you enthusiastic about what you do or are you just sort of sloughing around about it all?

Do other people see you as energetic? Do they see you as a diligent, reliable, fateful person?

Or do they wonder what are you up to? Do you live up on your job where you work?

Do you live up and live out the life of Christ that is within you?

Well, the Apostle Paul has something very, very strong to say about our lifestyle, our work ethic, and all the rest.

Any Ephesians, the second chapter, a passage that most of you probably know by heart, notice what he says in the second chapter and the eighth, ninth, and the tenth verses concerning being saved and how we ought to live.

It's what he says in verse 8. It's by grace that you've been saved by the grace of God. And he says through faith, that's not of yourselves, God's grace and goodness and love and mercy.

And he says not anything that you and I've done, but according to his grace and love and mercy, he's saved us, not in our works.

And then he comes to the verse 10, here's what he says, for we are his workmanship.

Created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that you and I should walk in them.

So let's think about this. A slothful person is not doing good works for God. A slothful person is wasting time, wasting their ability skills and talents.

It is the will of God. It is the purpose of God. It's the plan of God for every single one of his children to do what?

He says he prepared beforehand what he wants us to do. And so for me to rebel against that, and I said, I don't want to do that.

I'm not doing God's will. I know that. Yeah, but you know, you Christians and so forth. That is pure rebellion. It is the will of God that his followers be actively involved and do a good job at whatever our vocation may be, whatever God calls us to do.

And so it's an act of rebellion not to do our best at what we do. And he says, creating Christ Jesus for good works.

So the question is, is slothfulness a part of my good working? No. If I'm slothful, I'm not going to do the good work. Slothful, I'm not going to give my best. Slothful, I'm going to have a bad testimony and a bad witness.

And oftentimes we forget that the strongest testimony you and I have, the strongest testimony is sometimes not all the time. The strongest testimony is our quiet conduct in front of someone else, not by what we say, but by the way we carry ourselves, the way we listen, the way we dress, the way we handle ourselves, the way our conversations, what that's about.

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